Photo of the Earth from a distance 6 billion kilometers
Arena of human passions. Progress beam and gray dusk of everyday life. Jerusalem and Mecca of all religions. Crusades, rivers of blood. Kings, courtiers, slaves. The illusion of grandeur and power. Evil, war and love. Saints, sinners and destinies. Human feelings, ringing coins. The circulation of substances in nature. Hermit and superstar. Creators, ideological fighters - here everyone lived their time in order to disappear forever. Wealth, faith and desire for unattainable beauty. Flight of hope, sunset powerlessness. Air castle dreams. And an endless series of news: birth, life is a game with death, a kaleidoscope of all coincidences, go ahead and up! cycle completed. It's time to leave. And ahead of the light of other births. Civilizations and ideas.
The price of all this nonsense is one grain of sand in the void.
... 14 February 1990 of the Voyager 1 probe camera received the last order - to turn around and take a farewell photo of the Earth, before the automatic interplanetary station disappears forever in the depths of space.
Of course, there was no scientific benefit to this: by that time, Voyager was already far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, in 6 billion km from the Sun. The world of eternal twilight, which the sun's rays never warm. The illumination of those places in 900 is less than the illumination in the Earth’s orbit, and the star itself looks from there a tiny shiny point, barely distinguishable against other bright stars. And yet, scientists hoped to see the image of the Earth in the picture ... What does a blue planet look like from a distance of 6 billion kilometers?
Curiosity took up over common sense, and a few grams of precious hydrazine flew through the nozzles of vernier engines. The “eye” of the orientation system sensor flashed - “Voyager” turned around its axis and took the necessary position in space. The camera drives came to life and grated, shaking off a layer of cosmic dust from themselves (the television equipment of the probe was inactive for 10 years from the moment of separation from Saturn in 1980). “Voyager” turned his gaze in the indicated direction, trying to catch a neighborhood of the Sun in the lens - somewhere there must be a tiny pale blue dot in space. But will it be possible to see anything from such a distance?
The survey was carried out using a narrow-angle camera (0,4 °) with a focal length 500 mm, at an angle 32 ° above the ecliptic plane (the plane of rotation of the Earth around the Sun). The distance to Earth at that moment was ≈ 6 054 558 000 kilometers.
After 5,5 hours, a snapshot was taken from the probe, which at first did not cause much enthusiasm among specialists. On the technical side, the photo from the outskirts of the Solar System looked like a defective film - a gray nondescript background with alternating light stripes caused by the dispersion of sunlight in the camera's optics (due to the huge distance, the apparent angle between the Earth and the Sun was less than 2 °). On the right side of the photo, a barely perceptible “speck of dust” was visible, more like an image defect. There were no doubts - the probe transmitted the image of the Earth.
However, after the disappointment came a true understanding of the deep philosophical meaning of this photo.
Looking at photographs of the Earth from near-Earth orbit, we have the impression that the Earth is a large rotating ball covered in 71% with water. Clusters of clouds, giant cyclone funnels, continents and city lights. Majestic sight. Alas, from a distance of 6 billion kilometers, everything looked different.
Everyone whom you have ever loved, everyone you have ever known, everyone you have ever heard of, all people who ever existed have lived their lives here. Many of our pleasures and sufferings, thousands of self-confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every politician and "superstar", every saint and sinner of our kind lived here - on the mote suspended in the sunbeam.
- astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, opening speech of 11 May 1996 of the year
It is hard to imagine, but our entire huge, diverse world, with its pressing problems, “universal” catastrophes and upheavals, fit on the 0,12 pixel of the Voyager-1 camera.
The figure "0,12 pixel" gives a lot of reasons for jokes and doubts about the authenticity of the photo - did NASA specialists, like British scientists (who, as we know, divided the 1 bits), managed to divide the indivisible? Everything turned out to be much simpler - at that distance, the scale of the Earth really made up the entire 0,12 pixel of the camera - it would be impossible to look at any details on the surface of the planet. But thanks to the dispersion of sunlight, the area where our planet is located looked like a tiny whitish speck of several pixels in the picture.
Fantastic shot and went into history called Pale Blue Dot (“pale blue dot”) - a harsh reminder of who we really are, what all our ambitions and self-confident slogans “Man is the crown of creation” are worth. We are nobody for the universe. And call us in any way. Our only home is a tiny point, already indistinguishable at distances above 40 astronomical units (1 a. Å, ≈ 149,6 million km, which is equal to the average distance from Earth to the Sun). For comparison, the distance to the nearest star - red dwarf Proxima Centauri is 270 000 a. e.
Our posturing, our imaginary significance, the illusion of our privileged status in the universe - they all succumb to this point of pale light. Our planet is just a single speck of dust in the surrounding cosmic darkness. In this great emptiness there is not a hint that someone will come to our aid in order to save us from our ignorance.
Probably there is no better demonstration of stupid human ignorance than this detached picture of our tiny world. It seems to me that she emphasizes our responsibility, our duty to be kinder to each other, to cherish and cherish the pale blue dot is our only home.
Probably there is no better demonstration of stupid human ignorance than this detached picture of our tiny world. It seems to me that she emphasizes our responsibility, our duty to be kinder to each other, to cherish and cherish the pale blue dot is our only home.
- K. Sagan, continued speech
Another great photo from the same series is a solar eclipse in orbit of Saturn. The image is transmitted by the automatic station "Cassini", which is already the ninth year of "cutting circles" around a giant planet. To the left of the outer ring a tiny dot is barely noticeable. Land!
Family portrait
Having sent a farewell picture of the Earth to the memory, Voyager simultaneously transmitted another interesting image - a mosaic of 60 images from different areas of the Solar System. On some of them, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune "lit up" (Mercury and Mars could not be seen - the first one was too close to the Sun, the second one was too small). In conjunction with the “pale blue point”, these pictures formed a fantastic collage of the Family Portrait (“Family Portrait”) - for the first time humanity managed to look at the Solar System from the side, outside the ecliptic plane!
These pictures of the planets are made through various filters - to obtain the best image of each object. The sun was filmed with a blackout filter and a short shutter speed — even at such a gigantic distance its light is strong enough to damage telescopic optics.
Saying goodbye to the distant Earth, the Voyager camera cameras were completely deactivated - the probe went forever into interstellar space - where eternal mist reigns. There is no need to take more pictures of Voyager - the remaining energy resource is now spent only on communication with the Earth and ensuring the functioning of plasma and charged particle detectors. In the cells of the onboard computer, previously responsible for the work of the chambers, new programs aimed at studying the interstellar medium were overwritten.
Photo of the Sun by a Voyager wide-angle camera from a distance of 6 billion km. Two areas (not to scale) - somewhere there should be a pale blue dot and Venus
36 years in space
... After 23 years after the events described above, the Voyager 1 still floats in the void, only occasionally “turning” from side to side — the engines of the orientation system periodically counter the rotation of the device around its axis (on average, 0,2 angular min./s ), directing a parabolic antenna in the direction of the Earth already hidden from view, the distance to which has increased from six (as of 1990 the year when the Family Portrait was made) to 18,77 billion kilometers (autumn of 2013 of the year).
125 astronomical units, equivalent to 0,002 light years. At the same time, the probe continues to move away from the Sun at a speed of 17 km / s - “Voyager-1” is the fastest of all the objects ever created by human hands.
Before launch, 1977 year
According to the calculations of the creators of Voyager, the energy of its three radioisotope thermoelectric generators is enough for at least 2020 year - the capacity of plutonium RTGs is annually reduced by 0,78%, and, by now, the probe receives only 60% of the original power (260 W against 420 W start). The lack of energy is compensated by the energy-saving plan, providing for shift work and shutting down a number of secondary systems.
The stock of hydrazine for the engines of the orientation system should also be enough for another 10 years (several tens of kilograms H2N — NH2 are still sprinkling in the probe tanks, from 120 kg of the initial stock at the start). The only difficulty - due to the enormous distance of the probe with each passing day, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a dim Sun in the sky - there is a danger that the sensors may lose it among other bright stars. Having lost orientation, the probe will lose the ability to communicate with the Earth.
Communication ... it's hard to believe, but the power of the main Voyager transmitter is only 23 Watt!
Capturing the probe signals from a distance of 18,77 billion km is the same as driving 21 000 for years on a vehicle at 100 km / h, without interruptions and stops, then look back - and try to see the light from the refrigerator at the beginning of the path .
70-meter antenna complex far-field communication in Goldstone
Nevertheless, the problem was successfully solved, by multiple modernization of the whole ground receiving complex. As for all the seeming improbability of communication at such large distances, it is no more difficult than to “hear” the radiation of a distant galaxy using a radio telescope.
Voyager radio signals reach the earth after 17 hours. The power of the received signal is quadrillionths of watts, but this is much higher than the sensitivity threshold of the 34 and 70-meter “plates” of remote space communications. Regular communication is maintained with the probe, the telemetry data transfer rate can reach 160 bits / sec.
Extended Voyager mission. At the boundary of the interstellar medium
12 September 2013 of the year NASA has announced for the umpteenth time that Voyager 1 has left the solar system and entered interstellar space. According to experts, this time everything is without errors - the probe has reached a region in which there is no “solar wind” (a stream of charged particles from the Sun), but the intensity of cosmic radiation has sharply increased. And it happened more 25 August 2012 year.
The reason for the uncertainty of scientists and the emergence of numerous false reports is the absence of viable plasma detectors, charged particles and cosmic rays on board the Voyager - the entire complex of probe devices failed many years ago. The current findings of scientists about the properties of the environment are based only on indirect confirmations obtained by analyzing the incoming Voyager radio signals - as recent measurements have shown, solar flares no longer affect the antenna devices of the probe. Now the probe signals are distorted by a new, never-before-recorded sound — the plasma of the interstellar medium.
In general, this whole story with “Pale Blue Point”, “Family Portrait” and the study of the properties of the interstellar medium could not have happened - it was originally planned that the connection with the Voyager-1 probe would stop in December 1980 of the year, as soon as he left Saturn, - the last planet he studied. From this point on, the probe remained out of work - let it fly wherever it wants it, no scientific benefit from its flight is expected anymore.
The opinion of NASA specialists changed after they became acquainted with the publication of Soviet scientists V. Baranov, K. Krasnobayev and A. Kulikovsky. Soviet astrophysicists have calculated the boundary of the heliosphere, the so-called. heliopause - an area in which the solar wind completely subsides. Then begins the interstellar medium. According to the theoretical calculation, at the distance of 12 billion km from the Sun, a condensation should have occurred, the so-called. “Shock wave” is an area in which the solar wind collides with interstellar plasma.
Interested in the problem, NASA extended the mission of both Voyager probes to a deadline — as long as communication with space reconnaissance aircraft is possible. As it turned out not in vain - in 2004, Voyager-1 discovered the shock wave boundary at a distance of 12 billion km from the Sun - exactly as Soviet scientists had predicted. The solar wind speed has dropped dramatically 4 times. And now, the shock wave is now left behind - the probe has entered the interstellar space. At the same time, some oddities are noted: for example, the predicted change in the direction of the plasma magnetic field did not occur.
In addition, a loud statement about going beyond the solar system is not entirely correct - the probe has ceased to feel the influence of the solar wind, but has not yet got beyond the limits of the gravitational field of the solar system (Hill's sphere) the size of the light year 1 - this event is expected to occur no earlier than 18 000 years.
Will Voyager get to the border of Hill's sphere? Will the probe be able to detect Oort Cloud objects? Can he fly to the stars? Alas, we will never know about it.
According to calculations, Voyager-40 will fly through 000 over the years 1 light-year from the star Gleze 1,6. Further probe path difficult to predict. In a million years the corps of a starship will be bent by cosmic particles and micrometeorites, but the cosmic intelligence officer who has fallen asleep forever will continue his solitary wandering in interstellar space. He is expected to live in the open space about 445 billion years, remaining by that time the only reminder of human civilization.
Based on:
http://www.astrolab.ru/
http://www.nasa.gov/
http://www.rg.ru/
http://www.wikipedia.org/
Information